The assignee of the present invention manufactures electric vehicles. The electric vehicle uses a power electronics system that is used to distribute electrical power to various components in the vehicle.
Prior art related to cooling of power electronics systems involves liquid cooling of power semiconductor devices using a discrete heat exchanger electrically connected to a chassis, combined with air cooling of other dissipating components (either directly to air or by conduction to chassis and air cooling of the chassis). Disadvantages of conventional cooling arrangements are as follows.
The heat exchanger is only used once for the power semiconductor devices. Air-cooling of other heat-dissipating components is less effective than cooling provided by a liquid cooling path, which results in higher operating temperatures and lower reliability. The capacitance of the power semiconductor devices relative to the chassis is higher, which results in higher injected currents that generate electromagnetic interference (EMI).
It would therefore be desirable to have an improved power electronics system having integrated cooling that may be used in an electric vehicle, for example, and that overcomes the limitations of conventional implementations.